'My ...' He gasped and checked, and then he, who a moment ago had gently chided her for laughing, himself laughed freely.
'You are merry on a sudden, sir!'
'You paint a comic picture, dear madonna, and I must laugh. Bellarion the nameless in love with a princess! Have you discovered any other signs of madness in me?'
He was too genuinely merry for deceit, she thought, and looked at him sideways under her long lashes.
'If it is not love that moves you to these dreams, what then?'
His answer came very soberly, austerely, 'Whatever it may be, love it certainly is not, unless it be love of my own self. What should I know of love? What have I to do with love?'
'There speaks the monk they almost made of you. I vow you shuddered as you spoke the word. Did the fathers teach you the monkish lie that love is to be feared?'
'Of love, madonna, they taught me nothing. But instinct teaches me to endeavour not to be grotesque. I am Bellarion the nameless, born in squalor, cradled in a kennel, reared by charity ...'
'Beatific modesty. Saintly humility. Even as the dust am I, you cry, in false self-abasement that rests on pride of what you are become, of what you may yet become, pride of the fine tree grown from such mean soil. Survey yourself, Bellarion.'
'That, lady, is my constant endeavour.'